Toward a socio-logic of the film text* LENA JAYYUSI I would like in this paper to propose a set of methods and resources for the analysis of filmic texts, and to put forth some initial analytic observations. In doing so, I hope to elucidate some aspects of the intimate ties between the organization of various features of culture and social life on the one hand, and the organization of filmic texts as cultural forms on the other. For over a decade, work within film structuralism and cine-semiotics has addressed itself to the analysis of film texts. The main body of such work, however, has been concerned with advancing a formal program or a taxonomic system for film-textual studies (Metz 1974a and b; Eco 1976a and b), or with excavating a 'semantic deep structure' for specific films or film genres (for example, Wright 1977). My concern will not lie there, nor will it lie with treating the film text as a document of substantive social or cultural values — although both sorts of enterprise have their legitimate interest. Rather, my concern will be with the analysis of the particulars and properties of filmic organization and intelligibility. Central to this concern is the treatment of the film text as a produced account — a narrative that consists in an artful organization of cultural practices and resources, and in turn reveals some of the formal properties of our culture and our methods of sense production and assembly. 1 The filmic narrative, whether fictional or documentary, is a form of communicative practice, as are the narratives and accounts produced within the social corpus of written texts; it must therefore be amenable to the same kind of analytic investigation, albeit one that must attend to its own specificities of form and structure. This article will be organized in three general sections. Specifically, I will attempt to (1) discuss some of the properties of cultural and social organization that are deeply and particularly relevant to filmic practice and the filmic enterprise; (2) develop some initial analytic observations on the organization of the film text that will reveal both its deep embedded- ness in cultural forms and practices and some aspects of its own specific narrative and communicative character; and (3) draw some conclusions from this for the general area of 'visual' studies and cine-semiotics. Semiotica 68-3/4 (1988), 271-296. 0037-1998/88/0068-0271 $2.00 © Mouton de Gruyter, Amsterdam Brought to you by | York University Libraries Authenticated | 130.63.180.147 Download Date | 5/30/14 12:44 PM